A pioneering and interdisciplinary exhibition, Codebreakers and Groundbreakers will bring together, for the first time, the remarkable intellectual achievements and parallel narratives of two groups of ‘codebreakers’ working at the same time, but independently: those involved in breaking the Second World War codes and those who deciphered the ancient script of Linear B – Europe’s earliest comprehensible writing system...

Edgar Degas’s famous painting In a Café (L’Absinthe, 1875-6), features a dissolute bearded man whom Degas modeled on his characterful friend and fellow artist Marcellin Desboutin (1832-1902). Both men shared a passion for printmaking and this exhibition explores the Museum’s rare collection of Desboutin’s sensitively executed prints in drypoint...

19/09/2017 to 25/02/2018

Free

Displays

See a monumental bronze sculpture by Henry Moore, titled Hill Arches, on loan to the Fitzwilliam Museum from the Henry Moore Foundation in Hertfordshire. Moore is best known for sculptures of the human figure sited in architectural or natural settings, but here he has created a landscape in its own right – perhaps, as the title suggests, an echo of the rolling hills of his native Yorkshire. This enormous, four-piece sculpture is sited in front of the Museum, visible to all visitors and those walking down Trumpington Street.

Artist Pallavi Paul’s installation considers the mechanics and practices of truth production. The central motif of the ‘secret’ invites visitors to engage with ideas of espionage, secrecy and the world of information by viewing, reading and walking on this artwork. This textual landscape, composed visually to look like code, responds to the Codebreakers and Groundbreakers exhibition.

The artist Hugo Dalton will be projecting his dramatic lightdrawings onto sculptures in the Greece and Rome Gallery. His works will interact with the architecture of the surrounding gallery to create a series of immersive installations. Dalton’s work has previously been shown at the Victoria and Albert Museum, Today Art Museum (Beijing) and he has created a stage set at Sadler’s Wells Theatre.

Sieges have been a common feature of warfare for most of recorded history, with emergency money in the form of coins or paper being made for the use of the defending garrison or local people. This display throws new light on the story of these emergency currencies from the ancient Greek world to the Second World War.

See etchings of tender portraits of Rembrandt’s supporters, hushed nocturnal inky scenes from the streets of Amsterdam, and hurriedly etched figures capturing fleeting moments from Rembrandt’s daily life.